The Only Good 5.7 Rifle Under $1,000: Ruger LC Carbine Review

5.7x28mm round was designed by FN specifically as a replacement for 9mm, offering higher capacity, lower recoil, longer range. Whether or not 5.7 actually performs as well on soft targets as 9mm, debatable. But there's no argument that the 5.7 has a bunch of perks over 9mm, including reduced recoil, increased range, increased capacity, even the ability to defeat some level 3 body armor. Yeah, this is another video where I'm gonna 6.9 the 5.7. Now, downside of 5.7, obviously the ammunition, quite expensive, typically so are the guns. However, more consumer-friendly manufacturers like Kel-Tec and now Ruger are getting into the 5.7 game, and I'm telling you for certain there are more large manufacturers on the way producing 5.7 guns in the future. Today I'm looking at the Ruger LC carbine, a reasonably priced and well-featured carbine from Ruger. I got mine in September of last year and I've put hundreds of rounds through it already, so you can consider this to be an in-depth review if you're a label guy. I didn't know that Ruger LC stood for Ruger Light and Compact until I asked, so when I googled LC acronyms, I located some more exciting combos like Legion of Christ, Laura Croft, and Lactation Consultant. I wonder what you go to school for to be a lactation consultant. What does it pay? Is it an easy career transition from lawyer YouTuber to breast milk expert? More or less, the Ruger LC is a Ruger 5.7 pistol converted, stretched out into a straight blowback carbine. It takes Ruger 5.7 20-round magazines. It uses the same grip and controls as the pistol on paper. The LC carbine is 5.9 pounds with a magazine, which is a pound lighter than my lightest 16-inch AR-15, the Thunder Ranch Arrow Rifle. Off paper, this gun feels lighter and handier than the numbers tell you because the mags housed in the grip, the overall length is just 28 inches, even though it's got a 16-inch barrel, compared to 34 inches on a 16-inch AR-15. It's slimmer and less bulky than the AR, and unlike the AR-15, the Ruger's got a folding stock, which can bring the overall length of the Ruger down to just 22 inches. While I'm talking about the stock, the Ruger gives you a lot of options. You can stick with the stock that Ruger gives you, the stock stock, if you will, which is pretty good with a fixed cheek riser, QD sling points, or you can remove the Ruger furniture to add any AR buttstock of your choice on Ruger's folding and removable extension, or you can throw the whole son of a bitch out and use a pick rail mounted option of your choice, like the SIG MPX or MCX, in place of the Ruger stock extension. For a good chunk of this review, I used the new Strike Industries Dual Folder that lets you fold left or right. The Dual Folder seems a little bit delicate to use with a full-size rifle, but it was great for the LC carbine. The LC carbine isn't as powerful as an AR-15 or as versatile, but if you want to f*** with the guy with the body armor defeating carbine, I guess go ahead. It's a compromise. It's a foot shorter and a pound lighter than the AR-15, and in addition to still being able to defeat body armor, including level 3 body armor with AP rounds, you get a 25% performance bonus out of 5.7 with a 16-inch barrel versus the pistol. Most 5.7 pistols will push a non-armor piercing 35 to 40 grain round out at 1,600, 1,700 feet per second. This 16-inch version will propel those same rounds to 2,100 feet per second, SS195LF, 27 grain ammo, almost 2,500 feet per second. It's half as light as a 5.56 round, and it's 10 to 15% slower, but that's still nuts. We very easily defeated an amulet protective armor sample that was either a really heavy 3A or a really light level 3 armor on the range. You can't remember. SS190, the baddest of the bad for armor piercing in 5.7. Even though that was a little bit on the edge, like this is going straight through. Too easy. As mentioned, it has a 16-inch fluted nitrided barrel with 12 by 28 threads, a 1911 style ambi manual safety, a reversible charging handle, a pretty good bolt release, and an extended magazine release lever. Safety right here. Safe fire, easily accessible if your dominant hand's on the grip. There's your bolt release right there, and then there's your magazine release right there, so it's all accessible from your shooting hand thumb. I imagine that many people want to keep the mag lever, but the gun does come packaged with a push-button style magazine release. If you prefer that, or if, say, your dad lost an unholy bet with Satan, resulting in you being born left-handed, you can swap sides with that button. The barrel's wrapped in an aluminum M-LOK handguard that comes with a QD sling swivel attachment if you want it. The LC's pre-cocked double action trigger. It feels similar to most standard striker-fired polymer frame handgun triggers. It's about five and a quarter pounds on average. Nothing stellar, but it's pretty damn good. This gun's awesome on the range. There's no recoil, it's compact, it's light, it's easy to whip around, get yourself in and out of compromising positions. It's got a full-length pick rail for optics on top of the receiver, which, in my opinion, is a must, even if it comes with these flip-up OK plastic sights. The 5.7's long-range, light recoil. It'll allow for some precision, so I'd capitalize on that with a red dot. Ergos are great. Trigger's like a decent duty-style trigger. It's a good-looking carbine, in my opinion. I'm really impressed with the LC, even if it's just a plain old straight blowback sub-gun. If you're watching this video, you're probably trying to decide on which carbine you might want to get in 5.7 right now. The Ruger's the only real option under $1,000. I've got a P90 that's over $2,000. You might get lucky and buy a PS90 for $1,500, but then you have to deal with that gross dolphin dick barrel on there with a permanently attached flash hider, really complex barrel attachment and changing system. You'll almost certainly need a replacement barrel and a gunsmith to install the proper barrel, plus a $200 tax stamp, unless, of course, you're a more sovereign citizen and therefore the laws of the United States simply don't apply to you. That all said, the P90 is still a superior option, in my opinion, for a 5.7 carbine just really, really, really expensive. Then there's the Kel-Tec P50 or R50. The P50 is the P90 at home. It's a pistol manufactured by genius Scandinavian engineer George Kellgren who does whatever the fuck he wants in his Cocoa Beach, Florida lab. I think aesthetically the P50 would actually look amazing with the wire folding stock, but you're looking at about $800 for the gun and then you're going to have to track down a stock from Kel-Tec or a stock adapter or something from someone else, plus the tax stamp easily putting you over $1,000 there. Not to mention, I'm not sure that the Kel-Tec official stock kits are even being sold yet. The Kel-Tec R50, on the other hand, kind of looks like shit and doesn't have the full-length handguard that the Ruger LC has, but you're still talking 50 rounds of capacity with the ability to use easy to find cheap P90 mags, plus it weighs just three and a half pounds. I will repeat myself. The Kel-Tec R50 will take 50 round magazines, 16-inch barrel, and weigh just three and a half pounds, and it's probably going to cost about the same as the Ruger LC, roughly $800 street price or less. That's serious competition for the LC, but it's not out until the end of the year and you bet your ass that I'm going to review that. You've also got the CMMG Banshee Descent Resolute, which are high quality, excellent options, basically different configurations of AR, chambered in 5.7, but those start at $1,350 and go up to two grand, so you're in FN P90 range there. As you can see, at least for the moment, the Ruger's got a comfortable market niche cornered. For about $800 street price, it's high quality, but reasonably priced. It's very well featured. Recoil Magazine called it the poor man's P90, and even though I'm pretty sure they got paid to say that, I still agree with it. That said, we did have an issue with the LC. Over the past seven months, we ran hundreds of rounds of every type of 5.7 made for this gun, including the cheapest 5.7 on the market right now, which is American Eagle. We had zero issues, zero. The Ruger was 100% reliable without any lubrication or cleaning at all until we put a suppressor on it. Okay, hold on. Yeah, it's weird. So I pulled the trigger, like nothing. No primer indentation. So yeah, I don't know what the deal is, but it's like, you know, you guys saw it just ran. We went through two magazines, ran it just fine. First, we ran it with the new Rugged Alaskan 360, which is a wonderful general purpose, lightweight, great sounding suppressor. Shout out to my girl Callie at Rugged for sending this to us to use. But unfortunately, periodically, almost always on the first round, the gun simply would not extract the first round. Not a stovepipe, not some weird extraction issue. It was like it didn't even try. There we go. That first round failure again. We effed up. So we'd rock the bolt back, out would spit a spent shell casing. Sometimes it would actually chamber the second round, but apparently not hard enough to really slam that shoulder into battery. It's one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. The first thing that came to my mind, of course, magazine issue. Probably. No problem. Ruger sends me two more brand new magazines in the wrap. We still have the same issue. So next, it's got to be something with the gun, right? So we send our gun back to Ruger. They check it out. They find no issues. To be on the safe side, Ruger sends us an entirely new LC carbine. Still the same issue. Look at that. Same shit as last time. Exact same thing as last time. Probably nothing in there. Oh, nope. There it is. Yeah. So, you know, it just didn't eject. That's it. It was about at that time, we kind of figured that it was something going on with the suppressor. We ran a few hundred more rounds through it. No malfunctions whatsoever. Again, I really got to emphasize 100% reliable without a suppressor. Then I put on an Osprey 9mm suppressor. I'm sorry to say that I forgot to remove the Nielsen device. Please don't break my balls too much. The Osprey seemed like it was working pretty well until we had the same issue again. It was just less frequently. Oh, there we go. All right. So it did just happen again. Gold dot. And it was just like we've been told where it's the first round. It just caused a weird look at that. I get on Ruger's website. They have this disclaimer about using the correct caliber suppressor. But when I watched the elaborative video featuring sexy hunk of man from silencer shop Tyler, it's a very basic discussion. Essentially saying, number one, make sure the hole's big enough. And number two, you should probably use a 5.56 or 2.23 suppressor with this 5.7. And even though you can use a 30 cal or 22 suppressor, the 5.56 is probably ideal. I'm thinking about getting a dedicated 5.56 suppressor to run on the Ruger 5.7 carbine, posting a follow up video. But what I would say for now is if you plan on running this with a can, you might have some trouble with some cans for some reason. And this makes absolutely no sense to me. Shouldn't use of a suppressor create more back pressure? Like, shouldn't I be more worried about failures caused by increased bolt speed, not no bolt speed? Anyways, I'm not sure that this is an issue with the gun itself or with the cartridge. The Ruger, after all, uses a straight blowback, plain old missionary position action. It doesn't get simpler than that. I don't know what's causing it. I even reached out to some of the guys from Dead Air. I called our managing editor, Pete, at the Firearm Blog. He's one of the most knowledgeable subject matter experts I know on silencers. I call him the foot fetishist of the gun industry. He had no clue. So for now, this is an unsolved mystery, but stay tuned for the update with the 5.56 suppressor in hopefully a few weeks. Even with that issue, I was still very impressed with the Ruger. If you're planning on suppressing it, see if you can test it out with your can first. If you're not suppressing it anyways, I can say that the Ruger is a good buy. Has no other competition at the price point right now. Really impressed with it. Loved it. Fun as hell on the range. Give it a spin. Guys, as usual, thanks for watching. Thank you to Ventura Munitions, literally the best ammo store in the entire world. Thank you as well to Top Gun Supply, your online shooting sports superstore. If you want to win one of five $250 or $350 gift certificates, make sure to sign up to support us. TFBTV on Subscribestar or Utreon. We're viewer supported. We didn't accept any money, no free guns, nothing from Ruger in exchange for making this video. We do it for you. 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